Doc Banned Amgen Reps After Enbrel Sales Call
8 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 29th, 2008 // 8:22 am
In May 2006, David Peng, a dermatology professor at the University of Southern California, was disturbed by claims made by an Amgen district manager, who was trying to boost Enbrel at the expense of an older psoriasis med, methotrexate. And so Peng banned Amgen reps from doing ‘lunch-in-learns’ with residents at his clinic at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, and decided to use a med by Genentech for an investigator-initiated study.
We know this after reading an e-mail from an Amgen rep, Matt Mitchell, who was at the May 2006 sales call. He wrote this follow-up note to his manager: “During our call, he (Peng) expressed to me that the call you and I made on him in May really upset him. He took issue with some of the information you expressed to him about MTX: its safety and relative cost. He felt that the data was not properly represented. He stated that he has always had a lot of respect for Amgen and thinks that Enbrel is the best biologic. However, he thought that some of the claims you were making were not what he had come to expect from Amgen.”
His district manager, Sonya Grant, is the same Amgen manager who allegedly urged reps to pull patient files in physician offices so coding could be used to solicit psoriasis patients. The effort, which you can read about here, raises questions about violating patient privacy and are among allegations of improper marketing made by former Amgen sales reps, who claim they suffered retaliation after complaining about the practices and are now locked in arbitration with Amgen.
Some of those practices, by the way, involved Amgen reps being instructed to coordinate patient-outreach programs in which docs were paid to discuss psoriasis with patients who received mailings that were written by Amgen, and sometimes mailed by Amgen reps. One former rep - Marc Engelman - alleges the patients targeted were those with mild psoriasis, even though Enbrel was approved only for moderate to severe psoriasis.
Unlike some other docs who allegedly had no trouble allowing patient files to be pulled and solicitations mailed, USC’s Peng (in the photo at left) was put off by Amgen’s hard sell, which is the kind of behavior that interests the New Jersey attorney general, the Florida attorney general and the US Senate Finance Committee.
In response to messages, Peng wrote back to thank us for “your efforts to ensure that pharmaceutical companies hold to ethical and honest standards of marketing.” But he declined to discuss the episode.
An Amgen spokeswoman declined to comment on the e-mail or Peng, because of the pending arbitration, but wrote us to say this: “We believe the related arbitration claims are completely without merit, and we regret that these former employees are resorting to trying their cases in the media. Amgen expects all staff to behave in a responsible and principled way. These expectations are detailed in our Code of Conduct, titled “Do the Right Thing,” which includes: specific instructions with respect to proper promotion of Amgen products; guidelines for safeguarding confidential patient information; and channels for reporting violations of these policies. Our sales creed emphasizes that Amgen sales representatives follow compliance guidelines with absolute consistency. Amgen does not instruct sales representatives to proactively review patient files or promote off-label for any reason.”
Dan
More need to take such a stance. I applaud this action.
ol cranky
My only concern about this is whether his distaste for Amgen that lead to his conducting an IIS of a Genentech product (which I will assume was really his idea and not an idea advanced by a Genentech rep or MSL when he complained about Amgen’s sales staff) biased his study/analysis of the data in favor of the Genentech’s product.
Justice in Michigan
This is a case that deserves very wide publicity - both Peng’s action and everything that can be uncovered about Amgen’s marketing strategy.
It will take a lot of sunlight to clean up this rash (to mix dermatological metahpors). There is a longer history of Embrel off-label scams that, hopefully, will also be surfaced.
EEJ
Just an FYI on the Amgen Spokeswoman’s comment that “Amgen does not instruct sales reps….to promote off-label for any reason”.
This is a load of crap. “Amgen” might not encourage it, but some of the district managers that the sales reps report to do. This is pretty much an “unwritten standard” in the pharma industry. DM instructions usually amount to “do whatever it takes to get more prescriptions written, just don’t get caught”.
It’s just like Obama addressing an issue Bill Clinton had brought up, and Hillary stating “I didnt say that”. (I don’t support any candidates, just an example)
Justice in Michigan
Deniability makes the world go round….
ol cranky
Justice:
You’ve certainly got that right! The now former CEO of my old company used to say in public that we had 0% tolerance for noncompliance with the proverbial wink and nod. Off the record he not only drove people for off-label sales plus non-compliant “research” and “educational” grants. Of course, he also argued that certain non-compliant activities were compliant so I guess it was mandatory compliance with his regulations. . .
Doc Bans Drug Rep of Psoriasis Medicine « Health And Survival Blog
[...] Doc Bans Drug Rep of Psoriasis Medicine In May 2006, David Peng, a dermatology professor at the University of Southern California, was disturbed by claims made by an Amgen district manager, who was trying to boost Enbrel at the expense of an older psoriasis med, methotrexate. And so Peng banned Amgen reps from doing ‘lunch-in-learns’ with residents at his clinic at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, and decided to use a med by Genentech for an investigator-initiated study.We know this after reading an e-mail from an Amgen rep, Matt Mitchell, who was at the May 2006 sales call. He wrote this follow-up note to his manager: “During our call, he (Peng) expressed to me that the call you and I made on him in May really upset him. He took issue with some of the information you expressed to him about MTX: its safety and relative cost. He felt that the data was not properly represented. He stated that he has always had a lot of respect for Amgen and thinks that Enbrel is the best biologic. However, he thought that some of the claims you were making were not what he had come to expect from Amgen.”… Read Entire Story…. [...]
in the know
Amgen has been using these tactics long before enbrel. Just look at EPO in Dialysis. DM’s would demand that the best way to increase EPO doses would be going into dialysis centers and looking at patient charts. Any patient that has low HG increase the dose. But DM’s were not just to blame look to National sales director who encourage this as long as no one was caught. if you were caught then you were out in the cold. The justice department needs to look further then enbrel.